Launch HN: TagMango (YC W20) – Personalized video shoutouts in India

[mohammadhasan7]

Hi HN! TagMango (https://www.tagmango.com) is a marketplace where fans can book personalized video shoutouts from their favourite influencers and celebrities in India (essentially building Cameo for India).

Why now: Celebrity culture in India has always been way different and more pompous as compared to other nations. People are fascinated by celebrities’ lives of glamour, infact celebrities are actually worshipped here. Like Rajnikanth, a south superstar, has over 30 temples to his name. Employees are literally given holiday on his movie release day. These celebrities are respectful of this culture and are always looking to give back to their fan base.

India has been leading in content consumption and creation on social media, platforms like Tik Tok are doubling MAU every year. The craze for content, the fan culture and the ease of digital payments make it an exciting opportunity for the indian audience to actually interact with their favourite celebrities that all of this while has been a dream for them.

About the team: Divyanshu is an influencer with over 200k followers and a keynote speaker. I'm a second time founder with a tech background having scaled my previous venture Fleapo to 3 countries. We have a strong team, having hired from the leading institutions of the country like the IIMs. We shifted the startup from Kolkata to Mumbai with the entire team prior to YC for better opportunities of growth at bootstrapped stage and scaled the startup from a home office in Mumbai.

TagMango started as an influencer marketplace where we worked with some of the biggest brands like Hershey’s, ITC, Meesho, etc and worked with 80K+ influencers. Although the marketplace was profitable, it was fundamentally dependent on other social media so we pivoted to a fan-influencer engagement based model which is completely independent and scalable. Our previous model has built substantial credibility in the influencer ecosystem that helped us onboard over 1200 celebrities within 3 weeks of our launch, generating over $25K in revenue.

We're eager to hear community's ideas, experiences and feedback, whether you're an Indian or coming from some other place entirely!

[gyanchawdhary]

This is awesome. Here is some feedback:

1. Add a landing page for foreign brands who want to break into India. Use AWS / IP detect etc to reroute them to a US/EU specific landing page and show the influence cards with USD / GBP pricing.

The positive "shock" of seeing such an awesome and clear value proposition with the $$$ will make you stand out.

2. Develop an interactive iPhone demo on your webpage (see this https://en.ubank.ru/) - As a user scrolls, a profile image will load and as you keep scrolling, at some point, it will show a screen of a BRAND NAME being talked about or shown by an influencer.

3. Make your influencer URLs SEO friendly. Right now you've got a profile name as first name and last name - If I'm Google stalking some influencer/celebrity/whoever (your link should be in the top 3)

4. Design a good logo that's synonymous to your product

[mohammadhasan7]

Thanks for the insightful feedback. We're still building and furnishing the platform and will include your suggestions to it!

[Rakshith]

Yo which company gives holiday on that "celebrity's" birthday? I would like to know and is this company out of tamil nadu where Rajinikant is a star in? I feel like the idea is exaggerated, people don't really worship celebrities here, they consume their content just like in any other country. Yes certain underdeveloped towns in the country have such following that is because of a lack of understanding of their potential and higher life so they look at these things as they are accessible to them. Not trashing your idea but I wouldnt want a bad representation of the country as a whole.

[catchmeifyoucan]

I really like this.

One suggestion is to add filtering by language because India has so many regional stars. So it’d be awesome to find the people that can speak the local language when sending a shout out

[mohammadhasan7]

Sounds like something which we can surely do and include in our filters. Would make sense considering the number of regional users we have as well.

[newyankee]

A very good market i can think of is Indian weddings ...

[econcon]

Meanwhile, India still doesn't have Lowes or Homedepot.

Quality and verity is missing in superglues, resins, and other stuff which can found in hardware store.

Amazon doesn't fill this space.

[mohammadhasan7]

Didn't quite quite get your question! Can you elaborate?

[econcon]

I mean India has no way to order screws/bolts of specific size online.

Amazon doesn't serve this market. Can you believe, we can't buy a pulley online in India?

India needs MacMaster Car and HomeDepot/Lowes equivalent. Amazon is unlikely to serve this niche.

It's actually billion dollar market and no one is entering this space for now.

How can Indian entrepreneur/makers create prototypes if they can't source the correct parts they needs?

In big cities, there are some niche shops from where you can source the parts but they are not available everywhere.

[projomni]

Super interesting concept. I don't live in India. How did you validate the market for this? Prices are not low... particularly not for Indian standards.

[mohammadhasan7]

My co-founder, Divyanshu is a social media influencer. He's been getting requests about shoutouts since he began doing this, which led us to this idea. The sheer number of celebrities and influencers we've on boarded in a such a small time also helped us in strengthening the idea as they all were on board with this without much effort.

[netsharc]

I guess it's for India's 1%, which is still 13 million people, more than e.g Netherlands, Belgium, or Sweden.

I wish I can find an article I read about income inequality there, which described India as something like some percentage of rich people, and the rest being extreme poverty with not a lot of middle class.

[mohammadhasan7]

The market is actually much bigger. We're targeting each and every user looking for social validation, so to speak. Shoutout requests are fairly common for celebrities and influencers and we're looking to monetise this.

[kobiguru]

The number of mobile phone users and content consumers are very large (way above 50% ) of the country.

[mohammadhasan7]

Yes and continually growing as well. The number of internet users and online content consumers has also increased massively.

[gramakri]

There is a typo in some screens where it says "comign soon" (about video calls)

[mohammadhasan7]

Thanks for pointing this out. We're getting it fixed.

[artur_makly]

What is wrong with the current concept?

Today it is ego-fueling, shallow, does not push society forward, it only amplifies self-indulgences.

Does a ‘Celebrity’ or ‘Influencer’ really care and need your hard-earned $200 to chat with you for 5-minutes? or is that $ and time better spent talking to a shrink for hours? or perhaps a friend you haven't spoken to in a while over a really nice healthy meal?

Platforms like this breed and nurture mass armies of influencer citizens into dopamine-fueled marketing robots, selling whatever product that pays them the most without 0 consideration of what they are pushing and what the brand’s record is on humanity.

Example: @momnbabydiaries [https://www.instagram.com/momnbabydiaries/]

A middle-class mommy influencer who reposts an ad from good ol’ Nestle with her personal intro:

“Child's Happiness results in Mom's smile .. Isn't it true? And, my child seems happy when he is engaged in some fun activity.

Recently, I came across a fun learning experience for toddlers i.e. Nestle Ceregrow farm experience at #KidZaniaDelhiNCR @KidZania Noida which is designed to propagate and role-play the entire process of toddler cereal making, starting with procuring the right ingredients from farms (harvesting grains, plucking fruits, milking a simulated cow)

“https://www.instagram.com/p/B62ZilWHcpf/

As a parent, this makes me puke.

Does she truly believe that showing her child how mass-process food manufacturing works is better for his little brain than taking him to a real farm and showing the real cycle of life?? What has society come to when little Devon now has to practice milking from a ‘simulated cow’ .. Cows “ the gau matas” are demigods in India... I’m sure they can find a few non-Nestle ones around??

I’m not even getting into the harmful effects of milk on kids: https://www.livescience.com/49551-should-kids-drink-milk.htm...

Or how 3 out of 4 Indians are lactose intolerant https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Three-out-o...

Is she aware of how this global giant was testing experimental baby formulas on poor pregnant moms in India? https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/legal-limits_nestl%C3%A9-faces-...

Or how Nestle drains the aquifers it controls as much as possible, without any regards to sustainable usage or environmental concerns?

Mmm nope. Momma just wants to get paid, get that logo affiliation, and feel warm inside.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-...

What they got right? They galvanizing a “talented” segment of a large culture. Not easy to do. Bravo. Level unlocked.

What is their X multiplier potential? What if this popular motley crew of talent could get behind REAL social change and enlightenment in India, which has no shortage of social and humanitarian challenges?

How can this platform provide ‘cleaner fuel’ and incentives for this army of ‘catalyzers’... all the while enabling YC to hit their 100M ARR milestone?

[horizontech-dev]

Wondering what's the next steps for TagMango. I would love to connect with you folks.

[mohammadhasan7]

We're working on adding more celebrities and more features to the platform and working on a mobile app for it as well.

Would love to connect with you!

[artur_makly]

IMHO a waste of human resources, talent, and energy.

We can do better for humanity.. especially now.

Think harder.

[Beefin]

not very constructive. they do have a /covid page for donations which is nice.

[mohammadhasan7]

We're still building the platform and adding new features.

And glad you liked the fundraiser!

[artur_makly]

you are 100% correct. it was late and i just had this knee-jerk reaction.

This morning I had some time to gather my thoughts. ..see above..